Thus, while the story never says the name of the mountain, the reader is assumed to know based on these hints. The verse gives a new name for the mountain “YHWH Sees,” and even references a popular saying about what worshipers experience on the mountain. This parenthetical shows us that the place is identified with an Israelite worship site. Gen 22:14 Abraham called the name of that place YHWH Sees, as the saying is today, “On YHWH’s mountain (he/it) is seen.” Gen 22:4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar. Moriah is mentioned nowhere else in the Torah, and even here, we are not told where it is or even in what direction Abraham walks. Gen 22:2 And He said, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” (NJPS) In this case, I suggest the importance of the story, at least in its final form, lies in how it functions as a hieros logos or “sacred legend” explaining the reason behind the founding of a holy place. Thus, stories set in this period are often best understood through the prism of what they would mean for the people who composed the story and told it.
Whether or not among Israel’s ancestors were men with the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or women named Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel, the biblical stories are a part of Israel’s mnemohistory (collective memory), not its history. Since the mid-1970s, it is been generally accepted among critical scholars that the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis cannot be understood as historical accounts. Commentators have struggled with this story on theological and ethical grounds, but an equally important, if less explored, angle is historical: Why was this story written, and what political or social purpose does it serve?
One of the most famous, and disturbing, stories in the Bible is the binding of Isaac, in which Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice his son, and is only stopped from doing so at the last moment by an angel (Gen 22). Stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Historical Context
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